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Money of the Phoenix Empire
Currency, Denominations and Coinage The official currency of the Phoenix Empire (realm) is the ‘credit’, with ‘millas’ as 1/1000th part of a credit. Any attempt over the last centuries to stick a more colourful name to the currency have faded away or failed outright. Minting is the monopoly of the Emperor. Coins minted range from one milla to one credit in an abundance of steps. The most common coin by far is the simple credit, followed by the 10, 100 and 500 milla coin. Names for coins vary with location, and often historic local currencies live on, i.e. the Habichtswald ‘Groschen’ for a 10 milla (sometimes 100 milla) coin on former Habichtswald holdings. Also, among people who’ll probably only ever deal with millas, they often refer to them as ‘credits’ as well. So while there is only one currency in the Phoenix Empire, the names can (and will be) confusing. Depending on the prevalent level of technology on a given world, transactions above ‘a handful of credits’ are either paid by credit-card, IOU’s or the literal ‘chest of gold’. Transactions below one milla are generally solved via barter. Prices and Purchasing Power Due to the social structure of the Empire (and part of the reason for the very same) is the vastly disparate purchasing power of the three strata. Basically, all goods produced by slaves and needed to uphold their negligible living standards (further referred to as ‘slave goods’) have become ridiculously cheap. This applies to simple food, simple housing, simple clothing. ‘Commoner goods’ encompass diverse food, general health care, diverse housing, mass-produced entertainment and clothing and some level of travel and technology. ‘Noble goods’, unsurprisingly, are over-the-top expensive, and encompass any kind of luxury items and services and any access to technology beyond, say, a cell-phone. So, for the sake of illustration, one can assume that ‘slave goods’ only cost 1/1000th of the price they would demand in an unbiased economy, while ‘noble goods’ command a thousand times the price. Please note that the differentiation between ‘noble, commoner and slave goods’ is not consciously made within the Phoenix Empire, but is visible through all transactions and silently enforced by all those who sufficiently understand the mechanisms. Example As this kind of biased purchasing power is hard to explain without a lot of big words, I will try to give a comparison with prices we know. Imagine buying a pair of decent denims here in our world today. It will probably cost you about 100 EUR/$/whatever, but the actual amount is not important. Whatever the price, the same amount of money would roughly buy you fifteen simple meals or a fifth of a really nifty mobile phone or a simple laptop computer. Transferring the example to a commoner buying goods in the Phoenix Empire: Buying a pair of decent denims will pretty much ‘hurt’ his wallet as it would ‘hurt’ ours, so, his purchasing power towards ‘commoner goods’ is pretty much the same as ours. But for the same price, this commoner would be able to buy him enough simple food (i.e. junkfood, gruel, local & seasonal vegetables) to supply him for a little less than fourteen years. Buying a laptop, though, would set him back the price of 5.000 denims, or as much as a solid two-family-house with garden in our universe. Conclusion So, while buying goods of a level higher than your status is generally possible, it will always be a once-in-your-lifetime purchase. This immense inequality of the Phoenix Empire, oddly enough, creates several mechanisms that enforce and stabilize the very structure that created them. The most obvious one is that it cleans ‘contraband’ technology from those castes it doesn’t belong to. Almost every slave finding a handgun, or commoner finding a piece of nanite healing potion, will rather try and sell those then keeping it. From the point of view of the slave, one gun is less useful and more dangerous to him than the fact that he and his family will never go hungry again if he sells it. Also, the commoner will rather exchange one nanite potion against a life-long medical insurance for himself and his family, even if this will only cover ‘normal’ medical technologies. Inflation Due to the fact that the Phoenix Empire is a vast, mostly isolated system with only one currency and has so far been carefully steered by people valuing sustainability over short-term profitability, inflation is hardly a problem. Also, there are several prices that are historically ‘fixed’ and will not be undercut or overpaid and consequentially add further fix points to the pricing structure. For example, the minimum price for a slave will always be three credits, see short story of the same name for details. The current increase of trade with external systems (Coron, Aliaerean, Youh’Kai’Nor, etc) does pose a significant threat to the stability, and it remains to be seen how the Empire will be able to adapt. Category:Economy Category:Items